Making Judaism Safe for America

Speaking at the National Conference on War Camp Community Service in October 1917, Secretary of War Newton Baker discussed soldiers’ welfare work and the vital importance of building a vice-free, morally upright national military able to protect young American men from the unspeakable dangers they would face abroad. Baker warned, These boys are going to France; they are going to face conditions that we do not like to talk about, that we do not like to think about…. I want them armed; … I want them to have invisible armor to take with them. I want them to have an